THE MBA OATH

The MBA Oath is a professional pledge for MBAs my friends and I created in response to the 2008 financial crisis. We worked in partnership with HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and now Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana to write what is in essence a Hippocratic Oath for business. We challenge MBAs to raise their sights above the limited goal of maximizing profit to instead consider their broader responsibilities as leaders to build organizations that "create value responsibly." The Oath has been adopted by thousands of MBAs from hundreds of business schools around the world. In 2010, I published with Peter Escher The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders with Portfolio to tell the story of how we started the Oath and explain how each pledge in the oath relates to contemporary life for MBAs.